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Absolutely. We sometimes need to raise the horizons. The debate sometimes feels a bit sterile; we talk about just the GERS figures, rather than the evidence of what other jurisdictions have been able to do—short of independence, in some cases. You have cited one case, and I do not think that people in Alberta would be hankering after having those powers removed.

We need to get beyond the sterile debates and have a debate about a sensible set of arrangements that would give us the ability not just to grow the economy, but to manage some of the headwinds. Our very limited borrowing powers do not enable us to do that. That gets us into difficulty, because we rely on the UK Government, of whatever colour, to negotiate—for example, as it has done around the impact of the global pandemic, which was an exceptional event. We want to be able to mature our powers and levers to a position where we are able to do more of that ourselves. I do not think that that is a terribly controversial thing to say.

Where that gets into the principles and the details is where it would require a lot of negotiation with the UK Government. That would have to be done in good faith, but that door is not open at the moment.

Good morning. I welcome the opportunity to support your inquiry into the budget process in practice. You have heard from a wide range of stakeholders as part of your work so far, and I am pleased that that has included recognition of the significant progress and improvements that we have made over the parliamentary session. Those improvements include the transparency and comparability of financial information supporting public discourse and stakeholder engagement, both as part of the budget process and throughout the year. That progress reflects our commitment to continuous improvement, the important scrutiny role that is undertaken by the Parliament and, of course, the work of the committee and the very high quality of contributions and engagements from across civic society, for which I am very grateful.

We have come a long way from the work of the budget process review group in 2017 and from the finalisation of the written agreement. The fiscal landscape is increasingly complex and has included many unforeseeable fiscal challenges, which the Government has addressed through deploying the fiscal levers that are at our disposal.

Often, I am afraid, my meaningful engagement with the committee and the provision of sufficient clarity to it is not helped by the approach of United Kingdom Government ministers towards devolved Governments. My counterparts in other devolved Governments and I called on HM Treasury to involve us at an early stage in the UK spending review and offered to work with it on areas of shared priority and common cause. However, its response has been somewhat disappointing and—frankly—has missed an opportunity to develop a new approach.

In particular, as I set out to you in detail in my letter last week, the Treasury has not prioritised meetings with ministers from devolved Governments, has refused further ministerial engagement and will not provide meaningful clarity on spending priorities across Whitehall departments until after the UK spending review has completed. That means that we will not have satisfactory clarity about the UK spending review’s implications for Scotland in advance of its publication on 11 June, and explains the difficult decision that I took to delay the publication of the medium-term financial strategy.

I appreciate the difficulties that that causes for the committee and am committed to working with you to mitigate the impact. Publishing the MTFS after the UK spending review will allow reflection on the outcome of that review and will provide a more robust central funding outlook, which is key to our financial strategy and delivery plan. The accompanying fiscal sustainability delivery plan will set out the actions that this Government will take to deliver progress.

I am pleased to announce to the committee that, as part of the MTFS, I will publish a framework for the next Scottish spending review. That framework will set out the proposed timeline for our spending review and the approach that we will take in analysing budgets and spending proposals. I intend that approach to be anchored by this Government’s four priorities and the need to ensure that Scotland’s finances are sustainable.

Given the committee’s views to date, and those of our stakeholders, I am considering publishing the conclusions of the Scottish spending review and the infrastructure pipeline reset in December, alongside the 2026-27 budget. That will allow us to present the Scottish Government’s medium-term financial plans after we receive key funding information from the UK Government following its own spending review. I plan to provide the committee with formal written confirmation of that timeline in due course, ahead of publication of the framework, and would welcome the committee’s view on that proposed timing and on other aspects of the spending review.

I look forward to our discussion.

I think that I was very optimistic, originally, because there was a pretty low bar with regard to the flow of information previously. As I have said to the committee before, the flow of information and the relationships initially significantly improved, and that remains the case to some degree. To be blunt, because of that, I expected near spot-on information to be shared with us around the spending review outlook. Not least, I expected direct engagement through the finance interministerial standing committee and bilateral meetings and that that would give us some certainty. The UK Government knew what the timeline was for the MTFS, so I thought that it would be able to give us that degree of confidence.

I have to say that, at the meeting that we had—it was not a FISC meeting—with all the devolved Administrations and the secretaries of state, when we asked questions around, for example, the spending department priorities and which departments were likely to be prioritised over others, what we were told was, in essence, what was in the public domain and nothing more. When a request to have bilateral meetings was declined, because the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said that there was no time because he was tied up with bilateral meetings with Whitehall departments that would not conclude until the end of May, we made the point that the outcome of those discussions would determine the funding envelopes for the devolved Administrations. After that meeting, I felt growing unease and receding confidence, not least given the defence announcement, because there were signs of shifts in spend without the ability to have any level of detail about that.

At one point, there was a kind of vague offer along the lines of, “If you give us some broad envelopes, we’ll maybe tell you whether those are in the right ball park,” but, even then, the UK Government was saying that it probably could not do that until the end of May and possibly early June. In the light of all that, I am afraid that I concluded that, out of a difficult set of options, the primary overriding consideration for me had to be the accuracy of information, and I was not confident that I could provide accurate information at the end of May in advance of 11 June. We would potentially have to immediately revisit that information—two weeks later—if it turned out not to be accurate. I understand the committee’s concern about the terms of the written agreement, but I had to make a judgment about what was paramount. I felt that the accuracy of information was paramount, and we just do not have that at the moment.

I go back to the earlier exchange with Liz Smith. I think that we were all taking note of the lack of committee engagement; it felt very perfunctory, and we all want something better than that. The question is, what might work better? There might be a common cause to make some improvements. A finance bill might be one route forward, but there could be other routes, and we should have further discussion about that.

Obviously, we take careful notice of every committee report—what they say and the issues that are raised—and we try to answer queries and to reflect some of that opinion in how we might improve things at the Government end. There is a point to be made about the on-going level of engagement on budgets throughout the year and whether there is more that we can do to support committees in that work. Some committees will focus on certain large spending areas, but issues that can become quite public and controversial can involve small areas of spend. There was quite a lot of interest when we had to do the emergency budget review, with elevated interest among the public, in committees and in the Parliament. However, there is probably less interest in on-going routine scrutiny of the budget, so there might be things that we can do in that regard.

No, we do not want that to happen. Perhaps there was a bit of a flush of a new relationship and the possibility that things could be done differently, which all felt very positive, but that seems to have waned. At the April meeting, I was genuinely surprised, as others were, when we were told point-blank that there was no time for any bilateral meetings with the devolved Administrations. We felt that it was important to have parity with Whitehall departments, to have a direct relationship and to get the information that we require. What has happened has landed quite badly, I have to say.

—the right place. We just have not had that. It is important that we have a protocol with the Treasury. That has been good for the flow of information more generally and an important improvement, which we value, but there is work to be done to rebuild a bit of confidence, to be honest.

We were really clear with the tax advisory group about its role, what it would do and what it would not do. In considering areas of tax behaviour in a general sense, and in getting advice, it was clear that there were differing views in the room. For example, the STUC had a view on the role of tax and the tax burden that differed from that of some of the business organisations.

Those discussions were important. How can the public be made more aware of tax? That helps with people adhering to their tax liabilities. Some very important discussions and pieces of work were undertaken. However, the tax advisory group was never a group that would be consulted and asked about a specific rate of tax, because that would not be appropriate. The Parliament is the place that hears about the Government’s position on tax, not an advisory group. There would be a risk of the Government’s tax proposals being in the public domain before the Parliament heard about them, and I would be getting into some significant difficulty if—

Yes.

Well, the GERS figures—